Carlton Marsh

This morning 90 Pink Feet Geese headed west at 09.50hrs (JP). They were quickly followed by skeins of c100 at 10.00hrs and c100 at 10.04hrs west over Newtown, Cudworth (CG). They were first seen over the Birkwood estate, Cudworth moments earlier (A. Vincent).

On a not so warm cloudy afternoon, Chris Parkin came to a very late Humming Bird Hawk Moth feeding on passion flowers in his garden!

The origin of Carlton Marsh (continued) 

The recording system works like this. Mammals, Birds, Moths, Butterflies Wildflowers, Fungi and anything else is entered onto the database using Microsoft word or Excel. Photographs of wildlife and management work are kept digitally in separate folders on the computer (since 1998).

So, on a daily basis for example, a bird sighting is entered onto a Microsoft Word document with the time, direction of travel and the date. To keep standards high, rare sightings of any creature must be accompanied by a written description or a good photo to the recorder for verification. If it needs further authentication, the sighting is forwarded to The Yorkshire Naturalists Union.

Wildlife is also inputted on to the Barnsley Bird Sightings web site, and on to X (previously Twitter), which can be seen by a wider audience.

At the end of each year, the database is updated with all the previously mentioned flora and fauna to establish whether, for example, a species has been exceptionally early or late, and to see if their highest recorded number was larger than the previous all-time maximum.

Wildfowl counts are carried out every month of the year and sent in to the Wetland Birds Survey at the British Trust of Ornithology. By doing this the BTO can keep abreast of population increase or decline.

Monthly counts of birds have also been entered on to a monthly data set since records began. All this data has been published by BMBC in an Annual Natural History Report since 1976.

So, as you can see, what we do isn’t just a hobby, we are contributing to the databases of other organisations as well, which all helps to conserve the wildlife that we still have left.

To be continued